Take this thread to China...No don't....I don't know, does this say that anyone can model machinery and inanimate stuff in general, but try creating the illusion of something living? Taking that up one level, you get anyone can make - or create - a machine, but try creating a living being.I don’t wish to shanghi this thread to one of model railway but Absaroka is correct when she says “the most difficult thing to really make a good model of is a tree”. I would add to that by saying that to make model locomotives, coaches, trucks, track, signals, and all kinds of buildings either from kits or scratch built is comparatively easy compared to making any of the “green stuff”. It’s very difficult to create the correct illusion of “green stuff” in whatever scale you model. There is also the parallel in cross-dressing from what I read here, for most of us it’s very difficult to create the correct illusion of the woman we would wish to be.
I think you're being a bit unfair on Donna who (in that thread) was just making a joke (and quite a warm-hearted one, as I read it). It was (probably) me with my deadly seriousness who condemned you to thinking about this stuff over Christmas. The difference between me and you is my mother (and her mother) knew about my desire to dress up from the beginning and proceeded to insinuate that I was useless for much of my childhood as a result of it - kind of girly and emasculated.DonnaT, I have been thinking about your “one liner” all over the xmas period. I have never ever felt that I was compensating for being someone who likes to dress in women’s clothes. For the first ten years or so I believed it was a secret activity that no one knew about. For many of those years I was studying to gain a degree in order to advance in my chosen profession. My other recreational activity was playing with trains which I started doing at about six years old.
What that did was create a real need to validate myself, in particular anything that my "masculine side" might do naturally was invaluable - proving that I did have a masculine side. From that, very conscious, struggle comes my understanding of playing with trains, model making etc as an expression of a masculine side that my mother was busy denying.
There's a line somewhere about "man can only take so much truth", which I take to mean often it's better not to know the truth, it can be hard to cope. When I was a child, my theory is, I did get to see that I had such a side - and it caused me immense conflict. That is a very good reason for hiding it from oneself.If being an engineer is compensating / hiding the fact that one has a very strong feminine side, it seems to beg the question, which came first.
For me, both "male" and "female" sides were there in the first place, but, basically, I think I'm a man. Which probably begs the question as well. On the other hand there is a bit of me that "isn't there", like doesn't have an identity or, so far as I can see, a particular gender.
It sounds like you had a pretty strong "boy" identity. Yet, when they dressed you in girls' clothes less than completely, there was also a response which said "if you're going to do it, do it right." This seems to echo the idea you had at the top about "creating the correct illusion of the woman we wish to be".Where I lived as a young child, there were no other boys in my age group, so I would find myself joining in the games being played by the neighbours girls. Being the only boy I would often be cast as the “dad” going or coming from work, but sometimes I would be dressed as a girl in someone’s blouse and skirt. I clearly remember on these occasions being unhappy that I was not being dressed properly as a girl. Later I made a discovery that answered some questions but also raised many more questions. But this is for another thread.